Speakers: BRITE '12

Stephen Baker, is author most recently of Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything (2011). It's the "biography" of IBM's Jeopardy computer, Watson.
His previous book, The Numerati (2008), detailed the emergence of the data economy.

For more than a decade, Baker covered technology for BusinessWeek, first from Paris and later New York. At BusinessWeek, he wrote extensively on blogging, social networks and cloud computing. Earlier in his career, Baker worked as a correspondent in Pittsburgh, Caracas, El Paso and Mexico City.

Cathy Benko is renowned for being among the first to architect and implement a systemic response to the changing world of work. In her former role as Deloitte’s chief talent officer, she became a nationally recognized leader on innovative talent strategies and transformational change to achieve exceptional results. A foremost authority on talent strategies and transformational change, Cathy is the co-author of several best-selling books including The Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance in the Changing World of Work (Harvard Press 2010), Mass Career Customization: Aligning the Workplace with Today's Nontraditional Workforce (Harvard Press 2007), and Connecting the Dots: Aligning Projects with Objectives in Unpredictable Times (Harvard Press 2003). Her books have been translated into multiple languages, and her byline and insights appear regularly in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BusinessWeek, and the Harvard Business Review.

In recognition of the increasing importance of reputation and brand in corporate value creation, the firm has appointed Cathy leader of its Brand, Communications and Community efforts. This role taps into the skills honed in her prior roles including high technology industry sector leader, global eBusiness leader and national managing director of Deloitte’s award-winning Women’s Initiative. She continues to serve as advisory principal for high tech clients.

Cathy has been named one of the "25 Most Influential Consultants" and a "Frontline Leader" by Consulting Magazine, and is the recipient of its inaugural "Leadership Achievement Award" for Women Leaders in Consulting. Cathy earned her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science degree from Ramapo College. She lives in Northern California with her husband and two children.

As Siegel+Gale’s chief creative officer, Howard challenges our design teams across the globe to breathe life into brand strategies. He believes that powerful identities bring humanity to brands and generate belief in their essential promise. “Doing this successfully for organizations that operate globally,” he notes, “requires supreme simplicity.”

A prominent figure in the industry, Howard has led global branding programs that span virtually every business sector, receiving international recognition and numerous awards. He sees an extraordinary future for organizations operating at the nexus of social changes in health, energy, education, technology and communications. His work includes programs for Pfizer, Aramco, AARP, the Free Library of Philadelphia, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, SAP, Tata Consultancy Services, Qatar Telecom, Allstate and Bank of America.

You’ll see Howard frequently quoted by the business press regarding branding and design issues, or speaking at professional conferences on topics that range from brand building’s foray into areas like product development, human resources, community service and customer experience, to how smart phones and touch screens are opening new ways for people to interact with brands.

Earlier in his career, Howard founded a marketing services agency that was acquired by Omnicom in 2001. He also spent time at Interbrand, where he was a group director in their headquarters office.

Howard earned a bachelor of fine arts at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, where he later served as a guest professor. He completed Omnicom’s Senior Management and Graduate Management Programs at Babson College in 2007. He sits on the Board of Directors of apparel manufacturer Kahn Lucas Lancaster.

Previously, Boff was Chief Marketing Officer of iVillage Properties, part of the NBC Universal, where she was responsible for setting the company's marketing vision and strategy and overseeing the development of the iVillage brand. Before that, Boff was Director of Employee Marketing for GE, responsible for internal communications and driving key initiatives to GE's 300,000 employees.

Boff joined GE in early 2004 with 18 years of experience in marketing, advertising, public relations and communications. Prior to joining GE, she was Director of Marketing and Communications for Citigroup's Women and Company division. Earlier roles include Director of Marketing, American Museum of Natural History and Vice President at Porter Novelli, a global public relations agency.

Boff was named B2B Magazine’s top digital marketer of 2011. She is a frequent speaker at digital and social media industry events.

Boff earned a Bachelor's of Arts degree in Political Science and Psychology from Union College in Schenectady, NY.

Julie is the Founder of BrandTwist LLC a brand consultancy focused on helping entrepreneurs build their brands and leverage them as actionable business assets. Julie brings to this venture a wealth of experience in brand building for some of the world’s best loved and most successful brands. For the past 5 years until August 2011, Julie was the Vice President of Brand at Virgin USA overseeing branding strategy for new Virgin companies in North America as well as providing strategic brand support for the established Virgin businesses.

Virgin is a leading branded venture capital organization and one of the world's most recognized and respected brands. Conceived in 1970 by Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Group has gone on to grow very successful businesses in sectors ranging from mobile telephony to transportation, travel, financial services, leisure, music, publishing, and retailing Virgin has created more than 300 branded companies worldwide, employing approximately 50,000 people, in 30 countries. Existing businesses in North America include Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Mobile, Virgin HealthMiles, Virgin Wines, Virgin Galactic, Virgin Festivals, and the recently announced Virgin Hotels.

Prior to joining Virgin USA, Julie served as Executive Director of Consumer Branding at Interbrand, a leading global branding consultancy. She has 20 years of experience in strategic development and implementation across a wide range of innovative brands such as Orbitz, Stolichnaya Elit, TD AMERITRADE, Heinz EZ Squirt, Kool-Aid, Pantene, SBC U-Verse, Vitamin Water, Time Inc. New Ventures, and Subaru Tribeca. She is the creator of Interbrand’s proprietary Brand Tango® Innovation process which leverages out of category best practices to break through in competitive markets.

Julie is a frequent speaker on brand innovation and participant on numerous expert panels and University lectures. She is the author of the popular branding blog (www.BrandTwist.com) You can follow Julie on Twitter at @jcottin.

She is a graduate Cum Laude of University of Pennsylvania, is fluent in French and lives in Westchester NY with her husband and two children.

Larry Friedman has 30 years of experience in research, and has worked on both the client and research company sides of market research.

Larry has been the main developer of TNS’ models of Brand Equity and Engagement. He consults extensively with senior level client executives on the business implications of their research. He also publishes widely, and speaks before numerous industry forums, including ARF, IIR and ESOMAR conferences. He is a winner of a 2009 ARF “Great Mind in Innovation” Award.

Larry's market research experience began at General Foods Corporation.

Since then he has worked in numerous categories, including FMCG, financial services, pharmaceuticals (OTC and Rx), IT, telecoms, automotive and others.

He has considerable experience in a wide variety of research, including brand equity research, communications research, customer satisfaction research, pricing research, strategic/segmentation studies, tracking research and new product development.

Larry received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Columbia University.

Bob Garfield has never worked in advertising or marketing a day in his life. He has no relevant education, experience or data. He owns exactly one dark suit.

He is also the most prominent commentator and analyst of advertising and marketing who has ever lived. For 25 years, his AdReview column in Advertising Age evaluated, vetted, parsed, deconstructed and offered uncanny prognostications for thousands of ad from hundreds of agencies worldwide based on such criteria as strategy, communication, taste, ethics, brand relevance, cultural relevance and craftsmanship. Over the past decade, he has also famously – and presciently -- chronicled the digital revolution, culminating in his landmark 2009 book, The Chaos Scenario. His previous book, the 2003 manifesto on advertising And Now a Few Words from Me, is published in eight languages – including, of course, Bulgarian.

His biweekly Ad Age column explores the frontiers of 21st-century marketing and media. His biweekly Guardian column explores the intersection of media with whatever crosses his mind as deadline approaches.

In another life, Garfield is co-host of National Public Radio’s weekly Peabody Award-winning magazine program “On the Media.” For many years, Garfield was the advertising analyst for ABC News. He’s been a regular on Financial News Network, CNBC’s “Power Lunch” and “Adam Smith’s Money Game” on PBS. He also has been quoted by every major American newspaper, news magazine and broadcast news program, due to his appalling willingness to tackle subjects he doesn’t necessarily understand. He is a founding contributor to the Watchdog Blog of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. He’s been a contributing editor for the Washington Post Magazine, Civilization and the op-ed page of USA Today. He has also written for The New York Times, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, Wired and many other publications.

As a lecturer, panelist and emcee, he has appeared in 36 countries on six continents, including such venues as the Kennedy Center, the U.S. Capitol, the Rainbow Room, Broadway’s Hudson Theater, the Smithsonian, Circus Circus casino, Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium (Grand Ole Opry), the Federal Trade Commission, the United Nations, Harvard University and, memorably, a Thai Kickboxing ring in Cape Town, South Africa. It was for such public appearances that he bought the suit.

Jim Gregory is one of the U.S. communications industry's recognized experts and leading advocates of corporate branding. As founder of CoreBrand, Jim has developed a proprietary three-tiered process that focuses on:
Understanding of the brand and its meaning to different audiences; crafting the brand and the key messages it must communicate, and; measuring the brand and its effects on business performance.

Jim speaks widely on the subject of corporate branding to both business and academic audiences. He has also authored four books: Marketing Corporate Image: The Company as Your Number One Product, Leveraging the Corporate Brand, The Best of Branding, and Branding Across Borders.
CoreBrand builds upon over 25 years of experience in analyzing the effects of strong brands on corporate performance. As CEO, Jim oversees all key strategic issues relating to the corporate brand.

Over the years, he has developed a unique blend of creative and analytical expertise.
Jim created the Corporate Branding Index®, an annual research survey designed to capture vital reputation and financial statistics for CoreBrand's various measurement products. Such products include the CoreBrand® Analysis, which helps corporations and their agencies determine the return on investment for advertising and communications.

John Hayes is Chief Marketing Officer of American Express which does business in over 120 countries. For the past 17 years, John has overseen American Express’s global marketing efforts, shaping both the company and its brand.

In addition to overseeing marketing strategies and product development, John leads the company’s global advertising, digital marketing, market research, corporate sponsorships, brand management and publishing organizations. He has been the force behind the business strategies that have resulted in iconic campaigns such as “My life. My card.” and leading edge marketing programs such as Members Project, which empowers the community of members in new ways to make a difference in the world in which we live. Additionally, under John’s leadership American Express has created over 200 new product launches, including the coveted Centurion black card, Blue, and more recently ZYNC from American Express.

John is currently a member of the Save the Children - Newborn and Child Survival campaign council. He has been recognized for his contribution to business and the community on numerous occasions, most recently receiving the “2010 Corporate Marketing Executive of the Year” by the Delaney Report, “2009 Global Leadership Award” from the UJA of NY, honored with the “2007 Distinguished Citizenship Award” from the John A. Reisenbach Foundation and “2006 Marketer of the Year” by The Executive Council of New York. His work also received an Emmy Award in 2007 from the Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences.

Prior to joining American Express, John was the President of Lowe and Partners, and held senior positions at Geer DuBois, Ammirati & Puris and Saatchi & Saatchi Compton.

JEFF JARVIS, author of Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live (Simon & Schuster, 2011) and What Would Google Do? (HarperCollins 2009), blogs about media and news at Buzzmachine.com.

He is associate professor and director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism.

He is consulting editor and a partner at Daylife, a news startup. He consults for media companies and is a public speaker. Until 2005, he was president and creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications.

Prior to that, Jarvis was creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly; Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; TV critic for TV Guide and People; a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner; assistant city editor and reporter for the Chicago Tribune; reporter for Chicago Today.

Dr. Kamel Jedidi is the John A. Howard Professor of Marketing at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, New York. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the Faculté des Sciences Economiques de Tunis, Tunisia, and Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Marketing from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He has been teaching at Columbia University since 1987. He has served as a Visiting Associate Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 1996/1997 and a Visiting Professor at New York University Stern School of Business in 2005-2006.

At Columbia Business School, Dr. Jedidi has taught New Product Development, Marketing Research, Marketing Strategy, and Applied Multivariate Statistics. Dr. Jedidi has extensively published in leading marketing, statistics, and psychometric journals, the most recent of which have appeared in the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Management Science, the International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Psychometrika. His substantive research interests include pricing, product design and positioning, diffusion of innovations, market segmentation, and the long-term impact of advertising and promotions. His methodological interests lie in multidimensional scaling, classification, structural equation modeling, and Bayesian and finite-mixture models.

He was awarded the 1998 International Journal of Research in Marketing Best Article Award and the Marketing Science Institute 2000 Best Paper Award. He was also finalist for 2009 Paul Green Award for the Journal of Marketing Research and for the 2009 Long-term Impact Paper Award for Marketing/Management Science. Dr. Jedidi serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing and the Journal of Macromarketing. Dr. Jedidi has conducted seminars at several business conferences and universities. He has also spoken at and consulted with several multinational companies.

Gita Johar (PhD: NYU; MBA: Indian Institute of Management) has been on the faculty of Columbia Business School since 1992 and is currently the Senior Vice Dean and Meyer Feldberg Professor of Business. Professor Johar's expertise lies in consumer psychology, focusing on how consumers react to marketing efforts, especially advertising, promotions and sponsorship. She also examines the influence of consumer self-control and perceptions of control on decision making and consumption. This research has implications for the design of effective communication strategies.

Professor Johar has published several influential articles in the areas of consumer persuasion and decision making in leading marketing journals such as the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Psychological Science and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Professor Johar currently serves as the Associate Editor of two major journals in her field, the Journal of Marketing Research and the Journal of Consumer Research and sits on the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Consumer Psychology. She served as co-chair of the 2010 Association for Consumer Research conference. Professor Johar teaches courses on Advertising and Branding, Global Marketing Consulting for Social Enterprise, Research Methods, and Consumer Behavior to MBA, Executive MBA and PhD students.

As senior vice president, consumer marketing at ESPN, Carol Kruse spearheads all aspects of development, management and expansion of the ESPN brand. This includes the marketing of ESPN’s extensive array of television, broadband, digital, mobile, radio and print assets, including studio and live sports programming. She also drives ESPN’s social networking strategies.

Kruse previously spent nine years at The Coca-Cola Company, leading its global interactive marketing team as vice president. She joined Coca-Cola North America in 2001, when the company acquired RocketCash LLC, an online payments and consumer promotions start-up she co-founded. While at Coke, Kruse led her team in the development of the “My Coke Rewards” loyalty and relationship marketing program, which debuted in 2006 and currently has more than 16 million members.

Prior to co-founding RocketCash, Kruse worked in brand management at The Clorox Company in Oakland, Calif., and was vice president at Storm Technologies, a maker of consumer digital imaging products in Mountain View, Calif.

An avid athlete and sports fan, Kruse was recently named one of Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2011. She has also received the AdTech Lifetime Achievement Award, MediaPost’s Online All Star Award and many other industry recognitions. She holds a B.S. from Pomona College and an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California.

Chas has used his lifelong passion for multimedia as the technical lead on numerous award-winning interactive campaigns over the past fifteen years. He wrote his first line of code in 1979 on the BASIC cartridge for Atari 2600, and his last line of code this morning. In 2010 Chas created Docrew.com, the world's first Augmented Reality (AR) children's property, which has helped thousands of kids combine gaming and exercise.

For the last 5 years Chas has been CTO of Whistlebox, a Brooklyn-based company specializing in AR, user-generated video, Kinect experiences, and video kiosk software. Currently, Chas is CTO of 5ivepoints.com, a gamified mobile political app that has been called "the foursquare of politics". Last year, Chas was the host of the "Auggies", the AR Industry Awards show at the AREvent 2011.

Chas has also had past lives as an actor, writer, and singer with the comedy performance group No Time from 1990-2000. He graduated with honors from The George Washington University in 1993. He currently pays too much rent in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and young son.

Chas believes we are deep within a transformative era in the use of computer vision and the mobile web to change the way we structure relationships, nation-states, and politics. The changes taking place will redefine us as a species, and we should devote ourselves wholeheartedly to helping shape the future by shaping the tools with which we will build it.

John joined R/GA in 1998 and is a senior member of R/GA’s executive committee. As Chief Technology Officer, John oversees creative customer brand platform innovation and helps Marketing and IT executives quickly leverage creative brand opportunities triggered by emerging technologies. John manages approximately twenty-percent of R/GA’s staff and is responsible for enterprise-scale projects on five continents.

Prior to R/GA, John co-created more than 40 award-winning software programs for Intel, Simon & Schuster, and Microsoft. He also held senior management positions at software companies, including a Viacom affiliate he helped bring public in 1994. In 1990, John worked with industry pioneers, including Roger Fidler and Alan Kay, on a precursor to today’s popular digital readers.

John has been quoted and published articles in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes.com, ABC News, MIT Technology Review, and InformationWeek. He has lectured at Columbia, New York University, The New School and Parsons School of Design and published articles in marketing-related publications such as Advertising Age and Brandweek. John attended Franklin & Marshall College (BA) and the Columbia Business School (MBA).

Oded Netzer is Philip H. Geier Jr. Associate Professor of Business at Columbia University. Professor Netzer is an eminent researcher in the areas of customer relationship management, preference measurement (Conjoint Analysis), marketing research and modeling various aspects of choice behavior, including how choices change over time, contexts, and consumers. He specializes in building statistical and econometric models to understand and predict consumer behavior.

Professor Netzer received a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) and an M.Sc. in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Business, both from Stanford University. His research has appeared in top academic journals in the field. He is the winner of the John Little best paper awards, the Frank Bass outstanding dissertation award and Columbia Business School Dean’s Award for teaching excellence.

Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Netzer was a senior consultant in a marketing research, strategy and economic consulting group, developing spatial marketing strategies for leading chains stores. Oded teaches at Columbia Business School the core marketing course to undergraduate students and a course in Marketing Research to MBA and Executive MBA students.

Jonathan specializes in helping companies build their brands into vital assets for business growth. Working from a strong strategic foundation, Jonathan helps clients understand and activate their brand portfolio to build a cohesive brand experience for employees, customers and partners.

Jonathan brings a background that extends across industries and sectors — from Fortune 100 companies and large private enterprises to media start-ups and non-profit organizations.
Jonathan has built and managed brand development programs for Cisco Systems, AT&T, The Arc and Altegrity, among several others.

Previously, Jonathan launched and ran the brand licensing business for A&E Television Networks. An MBA graduate of Columbia, Jonathan is also an experienced lecturer.

These days Fabian is building Holstee, a lifestyle brand that designs goods with a conscience. Every product sold, produced or curated by Holstee is made in a way that respects the people and resources involved in the process while at the same time never compromising good design. The Holstee Manifesto, the company's mission statement, has been shared over 80 million times online and was described by the Washington Post as "the new 'just do it'". The young company is based in Brooklyn. www.holstee.com

Fabian is also Chairman and Founder of Sandbox - the leading global community of extraordinary young achievers under 30. Sandbox' mission is to identify the most inspiring young doers worldwide, bring them together and turn them into a global family. Sandbox provides tools that help these talents grow and achieve more, such as a very trusted peer-to-peer community, access to mentors, access to capital and incubation programs.

Sandbox counts 650 hand-selected members and has active hubs in 23 cities worldwide, including 3 in China, 2 in India and is currently building hubs in Cairo, Tel Aviv, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro. Sandbox aims to recruit outstanding young entrepreneurs from as many backgrounds as possible. The 2011 Forbes selection of "30 under 30" includes 5 Sandboxers. In 2011 Sandboxers were on the front pages of Wired, Fast Company, Forbes, the Boston Globe and covered in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, ABC, Inc Magazine, Vogue and many other media channels. www.sandbox-network.com

In the past, Fabian built up an event-management agency in Switzerland, founded the social innovation think tank Incubaker (www.incubaker.com), and was leading Swiss highschool politics on an national and international level.

Fabian holds a B.A. in Middle Eastern languages and cultures from Columbia University. You might see him at the office desperately trying to pronounce Arabic words.

Abigail recently joined Google to head up the strategic planning practice for the agency team. She works closely with strategic planners and creative teams within the advertising community to help amplify their strategic and creative efforts for their clients’ brands.

Prior to joining Google in late 2011, Abigail was executive vice president, strategy director at Publicis New York, where she directed strategic planning efforts for major new business pitches and provided thought leadership to key global clients, including L'Oreal, Nestlé and Coca-Cola.

Before that, Abigail spent 11 years at DDB New York. There, she co-directed the strategic planning department and directed strategic efforts for a range of clients, from PepsiCo and Unilever to Hertz.

Matthew Quint is the Associate Director of Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership, the leading global forum on branding issues for researchers and executives. Matthew works with the faculty director to develop the Center's overall mission and direction. He also implements the Center's communications strategy, and is the co-producer of the Center's BRITE Conference series. He is the author of the Center's newsletter, Brand Talk, and is responsible for maintaining and editing all of the Center's websites and blogs.

Previously, Matthew held other positions at Columbia University where he developed the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment, and managed print and digital communications materials for Columbia Law School.

Prior to moving to New York City, Matthew was the Assistant Counsellor (Nuclear Science & Technology) at the Embassy of Australia in Washington, DC. He worked as a policy researcher and strategic adviser on science and nuclear policy initiatives undertaken by the Australian government. This included detailed development of the strategy and negotiation effort which led to the extension of the Foreign Research Reactor Spent Nuclear Fuel program, a highly regarded non-proliferation initiative involving more than 40 countries.

Matthew has a M.S. in strategic communications from Columbia University and B.A. in political science and history from Cornell University.

Dustin Ritter is the Director of Marketing for PTI Marketing Technologies, the producer of MarcomCentral, a web-based marketing asset management system used to manage brands across a network of distributed members. Under his leadership, PTI has flourished in the marketing automation age as brands seek new ways to manage marketing content, assets, and processes in a global environment. Dustin has provided consultation services to many large brands seeking to implement and optimize marketing asset management. His work in marketing efficiency and innovation has lead to the creation of many ground-breaking strategies used by global brands today.
A major component of PTI's success under Dustin's guidance is based on the growth and innovation in marketing personalization. He is prominently known within the direct marketing community as an advocate and enthusiast for personalized 1-to-1 marketing. His understanding of personalized graphic communication through both print and interactive media has driven highly successful campaigns with response rates topping 20 percent.

Prior to joining PTI, Dustin served in a senior marketing role at The Active Network, the leading provider of participatory sports solutions, where he played a key role in product development for applications serving major national endurance events, Little League Baseball and NFL Youth programs. Prior to The Active Network, Dustin served as a Sr. Product Manager for ModernPostcard, an innovative southern California print marketing organization. During his tenure, he developed and executed strategic web initiatives that automated print ordering and doubled e-commerce sales.

Dustin earned his BS in Business Management from California Polytechnic University of San Luis Obispo. He moderates the Marketing Asset Management group on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter as well as many other marketing technology groups throughout social networks.

Brian holds a baccalaureate in math and physics, but ask him which teacher influenced his life most and he’ll mention the comp lit instructor who changed the way he thought about language. It’s that appetite for information across all arenas—as a child, his broad intellectual curiosity made him want to be an inventor—that makes Brian the ideal leader of our Customer Insight practice. His team digs into the facts and figures of our clients’ industries to mine powerful insights that build world-class brands. They translate complex data into clear, simple, purposeful ideas with the precision of—well, of physicists.

Brian has worked extensively for over a decade in marketing strategy, brand positioning, and quantitative and qualitative research, serving clients big and small across a variety of industries: financial services, professional services, high technology, retail, consumer goods, non-profit, health care and biotechnology.

Before joining Siegel+Gale, he spent four years as managing director of research and strategy at The Brand Union overseeing research and strategy projects for BlackRock, Pernod Ricard, Johnson & Johnson, Cadbury, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, HP, Coca-Cola, Alcatel-Lucent and others. Before that, he served as co-principal and managing director of boutique research and consulting firm Plaid, where he led business and product growth strategies for the United States Postal Service, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Voss Artesian Water. He also worked as a research and planning manager for New York ad agency Ferrell Calvillo, and as a senior executive for research consultancy Summus.

Brian was born and raised in France. In addition to his baccalaureate in math and physics from France’s Lycée Pasteur, he’s a graduate of Princeton University.

Randall is president of the New York chapter of the American Marketing Association. The NYAMA serves marketing professionals in a wide range of industries by giving members opportunities to push the boundaries of marketing, expand their skills and network with other experienced marketers. The BRITE/NYAMA study is one example of how the organization contributes to the advancement of marketing.

When not volunteering for the NYAMA, Randall is the CEO of Verse Group, an independent brand agency that combines practical marketing experience with a storyteller’s creativity. He founded the company to commercialize Narrative Branding®, a breakthrough methodology designed for creating or restaging brands in today’s digital world. Verse Group clients include Samsung Electronics, Colgate-Palmolive, NXP Semiconductors, Lockheed Martin, Quest Diagnostics and Starwood Hotels & Resorts.

Earlier in his career he held senior positions at FutureBrand, BBDO and JWT. His first advertising job was in the market research department of Ted Bates.

Randall has an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. His short stories have been published in over 2 dozen literary journals and included in several anthologies. He also has a degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

As Managing Director of CoreBrand’s strategy business and international efforts, Tim leads CoreBrand’s strategic efforts with our global clients such as Cisco Systems, Toshiba Corporation, Dun & Bradstreet and Lincoln National Corporation, focusing on building and leveraging global brand value.

Tim joins CoreBrand with over 15 years of experience in design, design management and strategic marketing. Before joining CoreBrand, Tim was VP of Marketing and Strategy at d/g* New York. Tim managed the marketing and account groups, as well as the firm’s largest clients: Sunstar Inc., The Quaker Oats Company, Unilever and The Limited Group.

David Rogers is the Executive Director of BRITE at Columbia Business School and the faculty director of the school's Executive Education program on Digital Marketing Strategy. He is the founder and host of the Center on Global Brand Leadership's acclaimed BRITE conference, where leaders from media and business discuss how innovation and technology are transforming the ways we build great brands.

Rogers is a widely recognized leader on digital strategy and brands, known for his unique insights into customer networks. His latest book is The Network Is Your Customer: 5 Strategies to Thrive in a Digital Age, published in 2011 by Yale University Press. He is the co-author, with Bernd Schmitt, of There's No Business That's Not Show Business: Marketing in an Experience Culture and co-editor of The Handbook on Brand and Experience Management.

Rogers speaks at conferences worldwide on the ways that digital trends are transforming business strategy. He received the award for Brand Leadership at the 2009 World Brand Congress. He writes regularly for BNET and has appeared on CNN, CNBC, Marketplace, Reuters, MSN Money, and Channel NewsAsia. David has advised and consulted on marketing and digital strategies for leading companies in the consumer packaged goods, technology, pharmaceutical, food & beverage, telecom, hospitality, non-profit, and media industries.

David is also a composer and musician whose music ("Rhythmically vital!" - The New York Times) has been heard from jazz clubs to Carnegie Hall.

Steven Rosenbaum is an author, entrepreneur, and curator. In his groundbreaking new book Curation Nation (McGraw Hill / 2011) he argues that the current path of digital content creation is a recipe for disaster. Interviewing 70 of the leading thinkers in media, publishing, and advertising, Rosenbaum makes a compelling case that the future of the web is curated, not created. And if history is any judge, he's been able to predict the future before.

As the CEO of the web's largest Video Curation Platform,Magnify.net - he provides a realtime curation solution that powers more than 86,000 sites. Increasingly, crated content is powering ecommerce, brands, and organizations like Patagonia, NY Magazine, Mediaite, and TEDx.

Rosenbaum was named New York City's first "Entrepreneur at Large" for Economic Development in 2011.

Rosenbaum created MTV's groundbreaking user-generated series MTV UNfiltered, a pre-web television project that handed cameras to young storytellers. Before email or the web, UNfiltered was what Time Magazine called "the Future of GenX News."

Since that time he has built a career finding, organizing, and contextualizing stories.

Rosenbaum's work in media includes filmmaking work as an Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker. His film “7 Days In September” gathered more than 500 hours of video around 9/11 – creating a curated journey through the eyes of 28 filmmakers and citizen storytellers.

Rosenbaum's vision of curation is the subject of his book Curation Nation (McGrawHill / Spring 2011) engages with more than 60 thought leaders and companies to help explore and define the power of Curation for Brands, Media, and Consumers.

In October of 2011, he was named the Science Journalism Laureate for Purdue University. And In November of 2011, He was chosen to be New York City's first Entrepreneur At Large, working with NY's Economic Development Corporation to bring more start ups and engineering talent to New York.

He is a regular blogger on technology and the evolution of the internet for Huffington Post, Fast Company, Business Insider, Forbes and Mashable.

Today, Rosenbaum calls Curation the “New Magic” of the connected world – fixing the signal to noise problem, and making the world contextual and coherent again.

Bernd Schmitt is the Robert D. Calkins Professor of International Business at Columbia Business School in New York and faculty director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership, the leading global forum on branding issues for researchers and executives.

He is widely recognized for his major contributions to branding, marketing, and management through his unique focus on creativity, innovation and the customer experience. Schmitt has authored or co-authored seven books which have been translated into 20 languages, including Experiential Marketing (1999), Customer Experience Management (2003), and Big Think Strategy (2007).

He teaches the course Managing Brands, Identity and Experiences, and won an award for innovation in the classroom for the course Corporate Creativity. He has also taught several other courses, including Market Innovation, Consumer Behavior, Advertising Management, Nonprofit Marketing, Luxury Goods Marketing as well as the Marketing core course. He has held visiting appointments in China, Germany, Poland, South Korea, and Singapore.

Schmitt is a frequent keynote speaker at academic and professional conferences worldwide. He has worked with sponsors and clients that include leading companies in the consumer package goods, automobile, electronics, software, financial services, pharmaceuticals, beauty and cosmetics, hospitality, and media industries.

Schmitt's research focuses on language in consumer behavior, experiential marketing, brand management and international business. His research has been published in leading marketing and psychology journals including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.

Schmitt has been profiled on CNNfn's "Business Unusual" and has appeared on BBC, CNBC, CNBC-Asia, CNN, NHK and on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He has contributed articles to The New York Times, the Asian Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times.

Don Sexton is Professor of Marketing and Professor of Decisions, Risk, and Operations, and Faculty Director, Center for International Business Education and Research, Columbia University.

He received his Ph.D. and M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, has been teaching for more than forty years at Columbia in the areas of marketing, international business, and statistics, and is a recipient of the Business School's Distinguished Teaching Award. Don has taught at the University of California-Berkeley, the China Europe International Business School, INSEAD, the Indian School of Business, the Moscow School of Management, and several other institutions around the world.

His research concerns marketing return on investment and marketing and branding strategy. His articles have appeared in numerous journals such as the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Management Science. He received the 2011 Marketing Trends Award for his work on marketing and branding strategy.

Don is often quoted in media such as the New York Times, Business Week, Ad Age, WCBS, Beijing’s China Economic Daily, and the Xinhua News Agency. He is a frequent speaker at marketing events, serves on the board of the NY AMA, is President-Elect of the Association for International Business Education and Research ( a consortium of 33 universities), and is an advisor to the Marketing Accountability Standards Board.

His best-selling books, Marketing 101 and Branding 101, have been translated into several languages including Chinese, Turkish, Russian, Vietnamese, Polish, Romanian, Farsi, and Indonesian. Don’s most recent book, Value Above Cost, explains how marketing drives financial performance and is also available in Chinese. Don is the president of The Arrow Group, Ltd.®, a company that has provided consulting and training services to such companies as GE, IBM, Unilever, Pepsi, Sony, DuPont, Pfizer, Volkswagen, Citibank, Boeing, Textron, and Verizon.

Marc Speichert joined L’Oréal USA in the newly-created role of Chief Marketing Officer in April, 2010. Reporting directly to L’Oréal USA CEO, Frédéric Rozé, Mr. Speichert is responsible for driving and enhancing innovation throughout L’Oréal USA’s four Divisions. These Divisions include Consumer Products (mass,) Luxury Products (prestige,) Professional Products (salons,) and Active Cosmetics (dermatologist offices, medi-spas.) In his role, Mr. Speichert is also responsible for Corporate Strategic Marketing, Media & Digital, as well as Consumer Market Intelligence.

As Chief Marketing Officer, Mr. Speichert is leading an organizational and cultural breakthrough. His focus is in three key areas: First the identification of synergies to create a more transversal view of consumers that will provide a base of knowledge to further innovation and gain new consumer and shopper insights. Second, Mr. Speichert and his team are focusing on identifying platforms and creating a pipeline for driving media and digital efficiencies and innovation through such vehicles as investment strategies for TV, Print and Digital; creating digital listening capabilities through the company’s Consumer Affairs Department; and the creation of the NEXT fund – a digital and media incubator fund which will benefit all L’Oréal USA divisions and brands. Third is business development, which includes investigating new growth areas in which to help L’Oréal USA deliver against the L’Oréal Group’s global goal of bringing one billion new consumers into its franchise within the next ten years.

With over fifteen years experience in the consumer products industry, Mr. Speichert has extensive knowledge in the areas of marketing and innovation. He began his career in marketing with an internship in L’Oréal’s Luxury Division in France in 1995, which was where he decided to make marketing his career.

Mr. Speichert received his Masters in Marketing Management from ESCP Europe, and from there went on to hold various marketing positions at Colgate-Palmolive beginning in 1997. He accepted a number of international assignments while at Colgate including Marketing Director in Latin America for Personal Care and Fabric Care; Marketing Director in Greece, and prior to his new position at L’Oréal USA, was Marketing Director, Category Innovation Center for Colgate Palmolive in New York, where he was in charge of innovation for Colgate’s Personal Care Products in North America.

Sree Sreenivasan is a professor and Dean of Student Affairs at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where he teaches in the digital media program, including social media and digital entrepreneurship.

Prof. Sreenivasan specializes in explaining technology to journalists and the general public. He writes the SreeTips blog for CNET [ http://cnet.co/sreetips ] and appears regularly on CBS and elsewhere to talk tech. For more than eight years, he served as technology reporter for WABC-TV and WNBC-TV in NYC. During 2009-11, he was part of the founding team of DNAinfo.com, a Manhattan news site with Joe Ricketts, Ameritrade founder (and new owner of the Chicago Cubs). The site was named one of the six hottest news startups of 2010 by Business Insider.

Prof. Sreenivasan has written articles for The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Rolling Stone, National Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes and Popular Science. He is co-founder of SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association, a group of 1,000+ journalists across the US & Canada. In 2009, he was named one of AdAge's 25 media people to follow on Twitter, and in 2010 was named one of Poynter's the 35 most influential people in social media. Prof. Sreenivasan is creator of such learning opportunities as Social Media Weekend, Social Media One-Night Stand and more.

Olivier Toubia is Professor of Marketing at Columbia Business School and the Research Director of Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership.

Professor Toubia's research focuses on various aspects of innovation and new product development, including idea generation, idea screening, preference measurement, and the diffusion of innovation. He is the winner of two John Little best paper awards, the Frank Bass outstanding dissertation award, and the John Howard dissertation award. Toubia teaches New Product Development in the MBA and Executive MBA programs.

Some of his recent research efforts have focused on the business value derived from online social networks. These efforts have included analyses of the value sellers derive from being linked together in online social commerce websites like the Amazon Marketplace, as well as the comparative value of promotional efforts launched through traditional direct mail campaigns versus offers provided through online social communities.

Bringing the better half of a decade of industry experience to the table on a daily basis; since 2007 he’s taken care of technical-related issues, build and maintenance of the network of sites and continued to keep Mashable’s infrastructure as up-to-date as its content. His passions and experiences are diverse, ranging from founding startups, user interface design and development, blogging and Internet marketing.

Frederick currently splits time between Florence, Italy and Boston, Massachusetts and is a graduate of Boston University, where he focused on computer science and mathematics.

Zeynep Tufekci is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill at the School of Information and Library Science with an affiliate appointment in the Department of Sociology. She is also a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Her research revolves around the interaction between technology and social, cultural and political dynamics. Tufekci is particularly interested in collective action and social movements, complex systems, surveillance, privacy, and sociality.

A pioneering, inspiring, strategic advisor, Ian Wolfman is well-known throughout the industry as a leader who ignites innovative marketing initiatives across many of the world’s most accomplished brands. As imc²’s chief marketing officer, Ian leads the agency’s marketing, public relations and business development functions with prescient marketplace awareness.

For more than 15 years, Ian’s expertise has led to successful ventures that include founding the Web’s first online events and promotions company and creating an online music company that ultimately became the emerging artists’ channel on Kazaa during the height of the network’s success. His ingenuity in the online music industry helped pave the way for subsequent digital micropayment models including iTunes. Today, Ian focuses on facilitating a similar shift in the practice of marketing, which is happening across all industry verticals.

At imc², Ian has cultivated and strengthened relationships with the agency’s clients and industry luminaries – including Procter & Gamble, the American Diabetes Association, Sharp, Omni Hotels, RadioShack, 7-Eleven, Hasbro, Pizza Hut, The Coca-Cola Company and Johnson & Johnson – helping catapult imc² to the forefront of the marketing services industry.

Outside of imc², Ian lends his leadership prowess as a board and committee member of organizations, including DMG’s ad:tech, iMedia, American Diabetes Association and iMoms. Speaking engagements include The CMO Executive Summit, Forrester Research Forums, AdvertisingAge events and Cannes Lions Festival.

Ian received an MBA from the Cox School of Business at SMU and a Bachelor of Science in corporate communications from the University of Texas.